8-19-24 - 8am - Plastic Bags and Micro Management

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Michael, my wife would like to know what about the
fifteen dollars value meal at McDonald's is not price gouging,
That's what she asked me. She says, she can't stand you,
but I love you.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Maybe you'll explain to your wife the cost that it
makes that it caught, the amount that it costs McDonald's
to make that so called value meal. Dragon give the
example of did you tell me this morning about tacos?
Because I think that's a great example.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Yeah, my son, you know, I go over to see
the grandson every now and again, and he was talking
a week or so ago that him and his wife
wanted to make some tacos rather than go to Taco Bell.
It's just for the two of them, right, and the baby.
You know you need a taco, right, So they decided
to go to the grocery store versus going to Taco Bell.

(01:01):
So they go to the grocery store by meat, by shells, sauce,
you know, the avocados, some tomatoes, lettuce, things like that.
It was over fifty bucks just get ingredients for tacos.

Speaker 4 (01:14):
He's like, I could have gone to Taco Bell.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Now Taco Bell buys in bold true, So they're able
to get that cheaper. But still when you go to
Taco Bell and you see what you get for fifty dollars,
and you think, wait a minute, I'm in Taco Bell
fifty dollars, I should have like ten bags of tacos.

(01:38):
And I don't believe for a moment that your wife
thinks that your wife loves me. I want to get
back to the scarcity. But before I get back to
the scarcity in a well, I think it's related. It's

(02:02):
California is known for its ban first asked questions, later
approach to problems. This is according to The Wall Street
Journal in twenty fourteen. California was the first state. I
remember when it happened because I remember saying it will
come to us eventually. What happens in California happens in

(02:27):
the rest of the country is maybe the exception of
a few states. It spreads like a wildfire right across
the Continental Divide and spreads across America. And when California
passed this comprehensive ban on single use plastic.

Speaker 4 (02:43):
Bags, I forget.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
I think I was actually going to premiere Radio Networks.
I was in California first speech, and I was going
to do the program from Sherman Oaks, and I stopped
somewhere because I'd forgotten something. So I walked into a
CVS and picked up I don't know, shaving cream or
whatever i'd forgotten. And then while I was there, of

(03:08):
course I ended up buying more stuff than I needed.
But and then I get to the checkout and she
wants to charge me ten cents for a bag. And
I hadn't thought about it, and at the time it
pissed me off so much, and I was like, no,
I'm not going to pay ten cents for a stupid bag.
So I remember carrying out everything like cuddled in my

(03:29):
arms to my chest to take it out of the
car to the rental car. And then when I got
to the studios, I was talking to my program well
he actually wasn't my program director at the time, but
I was talking to Bill about it, and he was like, oh, yeah,
we decided, in fact, he's the kind of guy that
would do this. They'd already ordered from Amazon the plastic

(03:51):
bag so they could have him take him the grocery store.
So I remember when this happened, and sure enough it
came to Colorado.

Speaker 4 (03:59):
But here's what.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Listen to this next paragraph in the The Ball Street Journal. Whoops,
plastic in the garbage went up, not down. Naturally, California
politicians now think that this justifies another new band on
carry out bags that will further inconvenience citizens. So here's

(04:23):
what happened. Specifically, the weight of plastic bag waste per
capita increased after the original ban was passed. Even a
study called quote plastic bag bands work close quote close
quote Plastic bag bands Work, done by environmental and public

(04:44):
interest groups, features a table showing that the amount of
plastic bags thrown away per one thousand people in California
rose increased from four point zero eight tons in twenty
fourteen to five point eight nine tons in twenty twenty one. Now,
of course, the study says, oh, they found something that

(05:07):
they didn't really want, but nonetheless still had to go, oh,
we still have to account for this, So what do
they do? They blamed it on a loophole in the law.
Wall Street Journal continues. When the ban on thin, single
use plastic bags went into effect, shoppers were left with
a choice between paper bags or heavier multi use plastic bags,

(05:32):
but many people apparently did not reuse the thicker plastic
bags as often as the government imagined they would, leading
to the overall increase in plastic garbage. So as a fix,
the California State Assembly are moving now to crack down
on those carryout bags, which have been permitted for the

(05:54):
past ten years. Yet they say the legislation does not
cover thirty reusable bags made of non woven polypropylene, which
feels like canvas, which is made of plastic. Grocers don't
mind if the government bans other bags because they can

(06:14):
sell those at about a dollar to a pop. But
as New Jersey found out after it passed its own
plastic bag ban, polypropylene ends up in the trash too,
and plastic consumption went up. Meantime, they can say finish
life gets a little more complicated for ordinary Americans who

(06:35):
are simply trying to get their pickle jars home in
just one piece. California's legislative session ends in two weeks.
This smart thing would be for lawmakers to recognize that
trying to micro manage consumer choice is harder than it
looks and can actually backfire in unexpected ways. But this

(06:57):
is California, which is really a golden state for ill
considered progressive experiments cliche Wall Street Journal. That's from the
editorial board. They're always the unintended consequences. So, speaking of which,

(07:22):
a Democrat progressive economist with respect to rent control, which
is what Kamala Harris is really after, says this quote.
We have people making five hundred thousand dollars in rent
control departments all over town San Francisco. In San Francisco,

(07:45):
we have surgeons living in Atherton sub letting out their
med school apartments.

Speaker 4 (07:51):
How is that equitable?

Speaker 2 (07:55):
It's not necessarily equitable, but you know what it is.
It's consumers trying to figure out, Okay, you got rent controls.
I got this apartment backward was when I was in
med school. I'm going to hang onto this because now
I can sublet it out. Oh I'm still paying the

(08:16):
rent controlled amount, but I'm subletting it at a higher amount,
and now I'm making money on it. Well that's not
what the rent control people wanted, but that's what they got.
Every time you try to micromanage the economy, people find
efficient ways to get around whatever that micromanagement is to

(08:41):
their economic advantage. California's local governments can reject new housing
even when it complies.

Speaker 4 (08:52):
With the zoning rules.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
More than eighty percent of all the lawsuits filed under
California's nineteen seventy California Environmental Quality Act pronounced quaw seequaw CEQA,
more than eighty percent of all those lawsuits are opposed

(09:16):
or against urban infill housing, not new development in natural areas,
but actually trying to prevent infill like building in downtown Denver.

Speaker 4 (09:30):
They're opposed.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
The lawsuits are trying to stop that, and they're using
the environmental laws to do so. They're not out building
out in the burbs somewhere. They're not out building on
farmland somewhere. No, they're opposed to the building that's going
on in the infill. Why, because times are changing. Younger
generations are wanting to live closer to central business districts.

(09:52):
They don't want to live out in the burbs where
I live.

Speaker 4 (09:55):
You know why.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
They don't want to buy a car, they don't want
to rent a car. They've got Uber, they've got all
the ride sharing services, they got light rail, they got everything.
So as a result of all of these lawsuits in
California's Environmental Quality Act, do you know what California has

(10:18):
the second highest cost of living in the country. Of course,
the one with the highest is because of where it's located,
and that's Hawaii. They're only a handful of lucky people
that are benefiting from rent. Control of Californians say they're
considering moving because they can't afford living California anymore. Almost half,

(10:41):
almost half of Californians are at least thinking about leaving
the state because it's just too damn expensive. Kamala Harris's
housing policies are Gavin Newsom's housing policies. She almost repeated verbatim,

(11:03):
and this is what we'll get, except when it's applied
to the entire country. Where do you go, Costa Rica,
South America?

Speaker 1 (11:13):
What?

Speaker 2 (11:15):
And then you have all the opposition to cheap energy,
It's exactly the same thing. Cheap abundant energy doesn't create scarcity.
It creates abundance because with cheap available, cheap available, and
abundant energy, you can live where you want to. You

(11:38):
can innovate, you can stimulate, you can create. Prices go
down because transportation of good to go down, cost of
manufacturing goes down. All of those things go down, so
you can create more at with less cost, but they're
opposed to that. All of that started again California, Kamala

(12:07):
Harris's home state about the time that Kamala Harris was born.
Malthusians they preached scarcity, but they modified where mouth Is
warned that overpopulation would result in a scarcity of food.
Malthusians back in the early sixties and the seventies warned
that if we had energy abundance, that would result in

(12:29):
over population, environmental destruction, and ultimately in societal collapse a.

Speaker 4 (12:34):
Mad Max movie. And ever since.

Speaker 2 (12:38):
That got set in with the hippies of the sixties
with my generation, environmentalists have been doing what they've been
trying to constrict energy supplies. They've been trying to increase prices.
Remember Joe Biden, I'm going to kill off the fossil
fuel industry. And then they use climate change as a

(13:01):
justification for those policies that increase energy prices. What motivated
those policies in the sixties was actual opposition to economic
growth and development, and that's that's their attitude. They didn't
want economic growth. What they want is communism. They want Marxism. Actually,

(13:28):
they want fascism, because fascism is really where government controls
the means of production, but they don't actually control, they
don't actually own the means of production. So from opposing
cheap housing, opposing clean, cheap energy, it was just an
easy step to now going after cheap food. Environmentalist Democrats,

(13:54):
which frankly is the entire party in my opinion, in
the nineteen nineties embracing the idea of making food expensive,
and of course they use government regulations. They used taxes
that were imposed on the food and the egg sector
of our economy. The war on farmers. You can look

(14:16):
at Europe and see what it leads to. This war
on inexpensive food is actually most advanced in Europe, where
the European Union is seeking to restrict new nitrogen pollution
regulations in order to get to net zero, net zero emissions.
But actually they want to reduce farmers. They can reduce

(14:39):
farmers the price of food goes up, you have food scarcity.
That helps control the population, that helps government control everything.
That's why scarcity is the mantra of Democrats. Republicans willieve
in abundant we believe in growth, we believe in innovation,

(15:05):
we believe in the ability of the human mind to
make to to create wonderful, amazing living conditions.

Speaker 4 (15:15):
They don't.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
They believe in scarcity, and I think behind all of
their I pro scarcity, which seems like an oxymoron, but
they're they're for scarcity, and I think that's because they
have this unconscious desire of It really is fascism in

(15:42):
the in the sense that it's they believe in the
managerial class, the professional managerial class, particularly of my generation,
to kick away the latter and prevent working class Americans
from becoming middle class because they need poverty. They need

(16:04):
poor people, because with poor people, you get what more
government programs. Oh look, you're poor, you can't afford a house, Well,
let us do that for you. It's the growth of government.
And my generation, we're coddled. We were entitled status seki

(16:26):
and now that we supposedly are in charge.

Speaker 5 (16:32):
Scarcy Michael, the intent is far more important than the
actual outcome when it comes to bilestings.

Speaker 4 (16:42):
You know that I have a.

Speaker 5 (16:44):
Former coworker who thinks that recycling is the all end all,
even though sometimes it takes more resources to recycle than
it does to just produce a new item. Because the
intent is what really matters.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yes, it's all about feelings. It's all about intent. It's
all about feelings. It's it's it's it's all about feel
good policy. But behind the feel goodness, now remember the
feel goodness. The intent is the front facing portion of
of policy by these progressive slash Marxist slash communists Democrats.

(17:23):
That's all front facing. Which is a great talk back
to lead in to my next point about abundance. Stop
and think about your life. I know for I know
from my own personal life. My parents were very humble people.

(17:48):
My mom, well, they were both depression are of babies.
My mom actually was was born into a family of
eight children and my maternal grand Mike maternal grandparents couldn't
afford defeed all those eight kids. So my mom actually
went to live with a doctor and his family and

(18:13):
took care of that helped take care of those kids.
My dad, on the other hand, was a child of
the depression in the dust Bow and that's how he
ended up and to watch Colorado, and they were lucky
in that they found they you know, their whenever they
were driving trying to get to California, thank god, broke

(18:35):
down and towatch and they ended up working for the
owner of a general store and to watch back in
the dirty thirties, those humble beginnings. They were renters. Now
we can talk about Kamala Harris and her claim that
her family had to rent their entire life. That's true,

(18:58):
but completely out of context. But she's trying to paint
a picture that she lived in this world of restriction,
in a world of non abundance. Well, what my parents
did was they never went to college, but they both
went to work and they were renters. And I can

(19:20):
remember when my I never understood the concept at the
time when my dad was building, having a home built,
but they had saved up for a down payment and
they had reached the point where they were pretty sure
they could build have this house built. I didn't understand
the concept of a savings alone at the time, but
I remember it sitting over dinner and them talking about

(19:44):
what the savings and Loan company, and I'm like, well,
what you put money in the place, you put money
to save, they're going to give you money to buy
this out. It didn't comprehend with I just couldn't make
it work in my head. So I'm asking all these
questions and they're explaining to me about, yes, we've been
saving in this savings and loan and we've been saving

(20:07):
up part of our income, and now we have money
for this down payment. And that same place that we
that we put money into save is going to give
us money and we're going to take that money and
give it to this builder. I mean, it was all
so complicated to me. And so my dad had this
house built and it was twenty one thousand dollars. My

(20:33):
mom still lives in this house now. If if I
were to take that house now, I would probably got
it and modernize it. They've kept it up, but they
haven't really modernized it. But that was that was my
family's move from lower middle class to middle class. And

(20:55):
then it was I remember my dad would buy a
new Osmobile. Oh I love that new car. Smell still do.
And they were progressing up the economic ladder by working
hard and saving hard. So that's abundance and that's what

(21:16):
America is about. That is not what this new breed
of Democrats are about. They're Marxist, and I think one
of the exact ways I hinted at it earlier about
what's going on in the European Union with trying to
eliminate nitrogen fertilizer all in attempt, they say, to reach

(21:41):
net zero. Is that really what it's about or is
it about scarcity. I think it's about scarcity. And I
think it's about scarcity because if you think about when
you go to the grocery store and you see the
organic bananas versus this is just the other bananas, how

(22:03):
many of you pick up the organic bananas because you
think they're better for you. Well, at the heart, I
believe at the heart of this organic food movement is
the demand that we see going on in Europe, and
that is to end the use of chemical fertilizer, which
is only possible through a drastic reduction of the human
population on Earth. After organic food activists took power in

(22:26):
Sri Lanka, they banned fertilizer. What happened to a Sri
Lanka banded fertilizer? The production of tea and other foods
declined instantaneously. They had an instantaneous financial crisis and a
population insurrection that overthrew the government. So behind all these

(22:52):
pro scarcity policies again, is that unconscious desire that they
believe that as professional managers, as the technocrats, as the
deep state that they can better control your life and
how you live that life, then you can. I don't

(23:20):
think there's any evidence that Kamala Harris understands anything about
the cultural, political, or intellectual roots of her party's turn
away from abundance to scarcity. But I do believe that
she has fully embraced it. I think historically, like many
Democrats that embrace all of this crap, they are historically ignorant.

(23:45):
Why else would you advocate or first claim that there's
price gouging and then claim that the solution to price
gouging is price controls because you intellectually do not have
the capacity to understand the historical significance and the historical
disaster that is price controls. The woman is a historical idiot.

(24:10):
She is herself a useful idiot. Harris once said that
she thought cloud computing. I'm not making this up. She
once said that she thought that cloud computing meant that
data was literally being stored in the cloud rather than
on servers. She said this quote, it's on your laptop,

(24:35):
and then it's therefore up here in this cloud that
exists above us. Right, It's no longer in a physical place.
You don't believe me, Snopes cragging out of that microphone.

Speaker 6 (24:53):
So you're now no longer are you necessarily keeping those
private files in some file cabinet that's locked in the
basement of the house. It's on your laptop, and it's
then therefore up here in this cloud that exists above us. Right,
it's no longer in a physical place.

Speaker 4 (25:17):
Snopes headline fact check.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yes, Kamala Harris Nce said cloud storage exists above us,
not in a physical place. This woman wants to be
the president of the United States of America. When I
talk to you and try to explain to you that
she is advocating for all of these stupid, these really stupid,

(25:41):
dangerous policies for US as a nation and as an individually,
she's simply a party useful idiot. She's a puppet. She
memorizes the lines that her advisors feed to her. There's
no sense she understands things like some line demand. So

(26:03):
why is she running on a pro scarcity agenda, you'd ask, Well,
I'd say this because she's the candidate of the Democrat Party,
and she's also the candidate that in twenty nineteen proved
to be such an idiot that she couldn't get one delegate,
She couldn't even get above zero in the polls and

(26:25):
had to drop out. This is who the Democrats are
going to nominate this week. How did the Democrats go
from supporting economic policies like John F. Kennedy the created
abundance and look and lower prices by lowering taxes, Kennedy
actually advocating lowering taxes to a party that creates scarcity

(26:46):
in higher prices. Because the baby boomers that control the
party now rejected the generous abundance vision of people like
John F. Kennedy and for that matter, the very goldwaters
of the world, all of whom became before them, and
instead they now embrace this small and mean embrace of scarcity.

(27:13):
They don't want us to grow. They don't want us
to prosper, because if we grow and prosper, they can't
control us. And it's about control, whether it's literally the
word price controls, or it's the Green New Deal, or
it's do you think that think about let's go for

(27:35):
a moment, just the idea about handing out twenty five
thousand dollars to a couple wanting to buy their first home.

Speaker 4 (27:45):
First.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
Do you think that's going to be restricted to US
citizens or do you think they'll be handed out also
to ille iimmigrants. I think probably both. But then think
about the restrictions that are going to come with the
use of that money. What kind of house are you
going to be able to buy? Oh, it'll have to
be all electric, Maybe it'll have to have solar, Maybe

(28:09):
it'll have to have heat pumps. Maybe it can only
be a certain size and instead of you know, a
fifteen hundred square foot or eighteen hundred square foot, it
has to be one thousand square feet or less. Because
it's scarcity. It's not abundance. It's not about growth and prosperity.
It's about control. Cities all around the world, Tokyo Atlanta

(28:36):
become more dense and grow outward simultaneously. If there's any
pro density democrats that points in Tokyo as a city
that grew its population without taking it more land.

Speaker 4 (28:49):
But he was wrong.

Speaker 2 (28:50):
Tokyo area increased fifty four percent between nineteen ninety and
twenty ten. It's expansion rate double during this time and
became less dense overall. Housing in the suburbs is far
teaber to building in the cities, which is how cities
from area again from Tokyo to Atlanta, had kept overall
housing prices comparatively low. Now what about Republicans. Republicans are

(29:18):
in a strong position to challenge Democrats on their vision
of scarcity.

Speaker 4 (29:25):
Hell, Michael, you just keep on educating us.

Speaker 7 (29:29):
I've got a double major friend of mine who is
in college and he's still voting for Kamala and I'm saying, oh, man,
I'm going to be using all the information you gave
me today to knock down some of his theories about
why she's a better choice.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
So thank you.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
I find that at the same time simultaneously, I'll find
it fascinating and dismain that. It shows you can have
a degree and not be very smart. I also worry
about they they're running. Look, Trump needs to do this,

(30:16):
and I've hurt him kind of swerve into it a
little bit. But he's got to get more focused on it.
You know, he talks about drill, baby, drill. We're gonna drill, drill, drill.
We're gonna make this country the most energy independent. In fact,
we're gonna start selling oil to Russia. We're gonna we're
gonna have so much Oil's gonna be coming out our
noses and our ears.

Speaker 4 (30:34):
Which is great, but explain why and what that does.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
If you do that, that's where I think Republicans missed
the ball. Republicans. Republicans are like Charlie Brown. We run
and we try to kick the ball and Lucy pulls
it away from us every time. You know how they're
pulling the ball away from from Charlie Brown. Right now,
They're theme this week is about They're all about joy

(31:02):
and happiness. Well, we've got to be joyful and happy
in explaining that. Look, what we want to do is
and again this is why I've used the term scarcity.
They're the party of scarcity. We're the party of abundance.

(31:23):
But we have to explain how we get to abundance
by Look, it's great because you and I understand when
I say we need to deregulate our society. But do
you think your double major friend understands what that means
in terms of housing costs, in terms of agricultural costs,

(31:45):
incur in terms of oil and gas development, or for
that matter, innovation of put it this way to it.
You know what, I'm all for electric cars, but if
we're going to have electric cars, and if we're going
to be all elect my gosh, we have to figure
out a way to improve the power grid, make it

(32:05):
more stable, make it more you know, reliable, and at
the same time produce much more electricity, because if everybody
goes electric and the production of electricity stays stable, that
means the cost of your electricity is going to skyrocket
because everybody's gonna be driving an EV.

Speaker 4 (32:23):
I'm not opposed to EV. I've told you I've never
opposed EV's.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
But what I'm opposed to this idea we're going to
force it into the marketplace without without increasing power supply
by drilling for more oil and natural gas, fracking, by
building more nuclear power plants. How about that. We we
just don't do a good job of explaining and talking
about how we want everybody to prosper. And prospering doesn't

(32:52):
mean we're all going to be millionaires or billionaires. It
means you might just become middle class, which is great.